Viva colombia!

Trip Start Nov 04, 2007
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91
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Trip End Apr 19, 2008


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Where I stayed
bus terminal
(Ipiales hotels)

Flag of Colombia  ,
Wednesday, April 9, 2008

So as fast as i arrived in ecaudor i´ve already left, it was a judgement call, at this point im content with my deciscion, nothing against ecaudor but since i have some colombian friends in the next 3 cities i will visit, i felt i´d rather spend the time with them and knowing there country through the local perspective rather then with a bunch of gringos in big cities and beach towns jaja thats what central america will probly be anyways!

So crossing into colombia was really streight forward thus far, We took a bus to the border as no buses seem to go through directly into colombia apart from one that goes direct to cali once a week.

We arrived at a small border town hired a cab to the border checked out, crossed the border which is also a bridge on foot, Went to the colombian side, where the border was surpringly streight forward, No papers to fill out (lonly planet says have your papers in order not sure what they are talking about as we filled out nothing) and they didnt give us any lil piece of paper to keep with our passport like most countries do to present upon exit, seems like they really have there stuff together.
money
Then we shared a cab to the nearest town (where i am now) and had a lil mission to find money as we didnt know the exchange rate so the black market guys would most definatly rip us off.
After 2 broken bank machines and a fun lil adventure through out this town we finnally found one that worked, it was really strange as it takes your card for about 2 seconds and spits it out so you think you´ve been rejected but then it promts you for your info, and then it spits out money so now with money next to my private areas i´m fully prepared to take on the day :P

Tonight we are taking a overnight bus to cali, which i´d been advised by my colombian friend is safe (as safe as anything is in life.)
Then tomorrow i will call up his brother and hopefully have some party as its been so long jaja i think last weekend we partied in lima already im 2 countries away.

So my one hour observation í have thus far is colombia deserves its backpacker reputation of really friendly people, so far we´ve been greated with nothing but big smiles and curious small talk (unlike peru and ecuador where that leads to BUY this from me sir! LLevate amigo!!!)

I think thats all more or less.
Cheers everyone

La buena vida
Brian
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